Careless Wishes
by tyvian
Summary: There are some things we tell no one. Some secrets harm. Some even kill. Leliana is good at keeping those, but the Warden has a sense for liars, and Leliana has been lying all her life. [f!Surana x Leliana]


**a/n: **in case you needed proof that my brain is a scary place. **warnings include** heavy smut, girls who like girls, among other things, and disturbing themes of abuse. you've been warned. i haven't seen enough stories that reflect just how fucked up of a world thedas is, so. here we are. this is probably going to scar some thirteen year-old just getting into fanfic.

* * *

**.careless wishes.**

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Leliana is no shrinking violet.

But something inside her most definitely shrinks or at least retreats when she looks up to see the Warden ducking through the entrance of her tent wearing nothing but a thin summer robe and the bottom half of a very tiny pair of smalls. Nylla Surana isn't tall or bulky by any means – she's compact and small and built with surprising strength, a kind her body didn't have when she left the Tower and its easy living. Leliana knows. She's watched since they met in Lothering.

"What are you doing?" she asks as Nylla straightens, and averts her eyes to stop herself from catching a glimpse at the pert bust that peeks through the robe when the elf comes closer.

"You're not stupid, though you play it," Surana says, one marvelous arched brow rising in what is almost amusement. Her dark, fine hair is loose around her shoulders, and it clings to the folds of the robe like silk. Her delicately pointed ears peak through it like little hidden treasures. Leliana has often wondered what that hair feels like – it would look pretty splayed on a pillow, but that is a distant dream of a woman who has apparently not unlearned her lovesick tendencies. She's learned that Surana often does the opposite of what she really means. In truth, Leliana should be disgusted with her. By her.

Nylla cares nothing for the sanctity of the Maker's Creation or the words of the Chant. She indiscriminately treats those around her with the cruelty that seems almost second nature to her.

She defiled the Ashes, a timeless relic beyond any sort of existing worldly value. Leliana remembers the calm look on her face when she drew a dagger across Connor Guerrin's throat, the pragmatic gleam in her eyes when she ordered the werewolves killed and Witherfang slain. She is a proud one, with the abilities to match. For all intents and purposes, she should repulse Leliana like none other, and yet it is Nylla's pretty face she pictured those late nights when she allowed herself some indulgence, when she muffled her cries into the elbow of her tunic and felt the hot release of her pleasure pool between her thighs.

"You can't possibly think we're out here on our own because I want to _talk_ to you," Nylla drawls, and Leliana is mesmerized by the stark whiteness of her teeth against the brown of her skin.

She shines – glows, almost – with health and good care. Nylla has never lost sleep over anything she's done, and the nightmares of the Wardens do not faze her. She's frightening. Terrifying, even. Too intimidating for such small a person, for such beautiful a thing, with lashes that could put Orlesian ladies to shame and envy and eyes oddly-colored, one and one, like the stray cats Leliana always was fond of around the darker places of Val Royeaux. Leliana has not wanted something like this since Marjolaine, and the thought scares her beyond anything else she's ever known.

"I will admit I found it odd that you ordered me to come alone, but I decided not to worry," Leliana answers lightly, looking up at the elf who, when standing, is at least a head shorter than her. "We are, after all, friends. Are we not? What is one scouting mission between friends?"

Nylla gives her the near-smile she's come to expect from the Warden. It's the closest she ever gets to the real expression. Leliana does not think she knows how to smile. A shame, since she is so comely.

"Friends, Leliana?" Nylla says, and then crouches across her, leaning forward. The robe dips open dangerously. Leliana feels her mouth dry. "Are you sure? I distinctly remember being likened to a gift from your Maker. Caramel pudding. Mm… and something about love. Strange, isn't it?"

Leliana forces her gaze away. "Ah, yes. The confession you rejected, you mean?"

Nylla snorts. "You are easily hurt, for someone who professes to be a hardened killer," she goes on, creeping nearer. Leliana feels the brush of a gossamer tip of hair against her cheek. Gods, no. Not right now.

"And you are acting unlike yourself," Leliana answers, trying not to focus on the fact that she can feel the heat of Nylla's body through the back of her nightshift.

"I don't think I am," Surana says. Her hand sneaks into the back of Leliana's hair, her short nails scraping gently at the bard's scalp. She smirks when the human shudders and she sees gooseflesh prickle the skin between her neck and shoulder. "Can you honestly tell me you haven't fantasized about this?"

Leliana remains silent, mouth clamped firmly shut.

Nylla laughs softly, and the sound sends a shock of warmth to a place Leliana wishes would stop contradicting her thoughts. The fingers continue combing, stroking, tug at the binding in her braid and get it loose. Leliana doesn't stop her. It feels like ice has seeped into her every limb. "Stubborn thing, aren't you?"

"What do you want, Warden?" she manages at last, but that is the wrong thing to say.

The elf presses herself against Leliana's back, and suddenly every detail the robe hid is something she can feel in relief on her skin. The long, boyish curve of Nylla's hips and the flat plain of her stomach, the small softness of her round breasts, and the pebbled tips of them. No, no, she can't. She won't. Her resolve is already collapsing when Nylla draws the straps of her nightshirt over her shoulders so that the pale expanse of the skin there is exposed, but it dissolves and withers away when Nylla leans down and presses her lips there. Heat. Heat!

"Ah…"

Nylla nips at her at the sound, and Leliana starts – elves have sharp canines, and it makes Leliana wonder at their heritage.

"Does that mean you want me to stop?" she whispers, and the bard curses under her breath. "Do you like being touched by women, Leliana? Do you prefer us?"

"I don't see what that has to do with anything," Leliana says pointedly. She's still fuming over the fact that her self-control is apparently as good as a show-courtesan's by the time Nylla's deft hand slips the tunic down even farther, revealing Leliana's carefully wrapped binder.

"It has everything to do with anything," Nylla says, her voice almost businesslike. Leliana hasn't even realized she's bare until one finger tweaks at her and she startles, feeling betrayed and incensed at the reaction she has.

She'd resigned herself to the idea of never being able to be as close as this to the Warden. She'd played the moment Nylla had said no over and over in her head. _I don't think that would be appropriate,_ Surana had said, her mismatched eyes cold and unyielding, as though Leliana's admission had repulsed her. She'd cried that night over her lute, silent tears for a silent wrong, and now – now she feels like she is trapped in a waking dream, the kind she has before waking in the morning, about tangling Nylla in bedsheets and watching her lovely body strain and gleam and arc under Orlesian-learned attentions, about holding her as the waves of desire shattered over her and sneaking prying fingers into parts that would make the Warden gasp and cry and go mad with delight.

This, now, is not a dream. Nylla is behind her, sinew and actuality and very, very unloving. Perhaps what she imagined about having with the Warden is a dream, truly. She doesn't feel she knows Nylla at all, like a book you read but do not much understand.

"Did you think you would be able to have your way with me?" Nylla asks as she peels away the binder and slides the tunic down even farther. Now Leliana is naked to the waist, all her scars and imperfections on display to Nylla's wandering eyes. Satisfactory, is what the Warden's gaze says, and something needy and spiked rises in her at the sight. Nylla parts Leliana's hair – it has grown longer since they first met – and then grasps at the roots, firm but gentle.

"I…" Leliana searches for the right words. "I thought it would be different."

"Aren't things usually?" the Warden murmurs, and her other hand slides down Leliana's spine. "Have you thought of me often? Wondered what I would look like beneath you?"

The mocking remark strikes too close to home. "Why all the questions?" Leliana snaps, anger flaring in her heart. "Did you come here to mock me or get me on my back?"

She feels Nylla smile a little half-smile against her nape again. "Both, if I must be honest," Nylla says, and then with unexpected force turns Leliana over and slams her down on the bedroll before her. Now she sits between Leliana's open legs, her own crossed casually as though she is sitting by the campfire and taking dinner in the fashion she always does, her stare trailing lazily over what the push of gravity does to Leliana when she's lying back like this. The human hasn't stopped her yet. She'd suspected Leliana's attraction early on in the recruitment, but until the confession, it wasn't a sure thing. What fun this will be.

"What are you looking at?" Leliana nearly growls. The muddling combination of lust and impatience is confusing her.

"So you _can_ get angry," Nylla observes lightly, and that hand creeps forward again. "It suits you. Better than the… meekness you so prefer hiding yourself behind."

"Kindness is not meekness," the bard returns, her breath hissing between her teeth when Nylla's fingers find her breast again. "The Maker says – "

"The Maker doesn't want to fuck you," the Warden interrupts. It makes Leliana's heart jump and stutter. "He's not here right now. He hasn't been in Ages. You're like a child. Where do you think we go when we die, Leliana? To the Maker's side?"

"I will not bandy theological theories with you _in bed_," Leliana says, trying to get up. The Warden's hands pin her down again.

"It's not theory, my dear," Nylla assures her, wiping the hair from her face with mechanical care so unlike the force she used to keep Leliana prostrate. She's looking down at Leliana over her infinitely straight nose with something akin to pity. "We all go to the Fade, and we wander there till we go mad or decide to try and possess someone. Does that displease you? Knowing that your precious Allfather isn't watching over us all? Or perhaps it scares you, the way I do. You can't even admit you want me aloud."

Leliana just watches her with eyes blue as ice, her shapely lips drawn into a frown. "I hope the Maker finds it in His heart to forgive you. He loves all His children, even those that stray."

And then the Warden is abruptly so near Leliana can count every crease in her mouth, smell the mint on her breath, and discover that her lashes are not in fact black, like her hair, but a very dark, teak-like brown. A jar, Leliana thinks distantly. She'd like to put those in a jar.

"He does, does He?" Nylla sneers, contorting her pretty features. "That must be why He sent us the darkspawn. A true blessing."

Leliana draws in an offended breath. "I – "

Nylla snarls, the corners of her mouth drawing back.

"Oh, shut up," she says, and then kisses Leliana with bruising strength, her hands snaking to the back of the bard's head, holding the woman steady as she takes what she wants at her own pace, exploring, sucking, nibbling, until Leliana melts under her with a small sigh of compliance, her own hands coming to rest on Nylla's waist, digging her fingers in till the skin is irritated and her nails grow white with tension. The Warden doesn't break for breath, just tilts her head to the right and delves deeper, her front pressing and sliding over Leliana's, her robe falling open further over her shoulders; the defined muscles in her back work as she sidles closer, hips moving, palms still grasping at Leliana's face, not even pausing when the bard whimpers at the slow, deliberate circles she's making with her lower half.

Leliana tries to roll them over, but Nylla straddles her with all the confidence of an Antivan whoremaster, strong thighs keeping her in place, one arm propping her own weight up as she finally tastes the victory of Leliana's mouth opening to hers. She hears Leliana breathe in sharply, once, through the nose, and almost laughs at the whining sound the human gives when she tracks a fine line down the roof of Leliana's mouth with a careful tongue. When she pulls back and away, strands of shared saliva threading between them, she sees that Leliana is red as a beet, her lips swollen, eyes clouded.

"Have you ever been with a mage?" Nylla says, taking Leliana's wrists and holding them at the bard's sides.

"I… I must have," Leliana answers distantly before she licks her lips and fixes her stare on Nylla's mouth.

"A popular girl, then. How about a mage who knows what she is doing?" the Warden continues in that soft, dangerous voice, and Leliana feels her breath catch when the air around them charges and tenses. "We get creative in the Tower. So many rules, so many restrictions. The library was the perfect place to hide. Have you ever been taken against a bookcase? It's quite the experience."

"I can't say I have," the human murmurs, feeling something slick and hot build low in her body at the thought: the Warden, her front pressed to a bookcase, begging for release, her robes gathered around her marvelous legs, hair swept from her beautiful back, eyes shut in rapture so strong it would make her knees buckle. Gods. It may yet become reality – perhaps not the begging part. Nylla is not the type. Leliana had never been after Marjolaine, either, but she has a feeling the Warden wants to change that.

"There was this girl in a class above me," Nylla tells her, and Leliana frowns at her. Possessiveness had been a great part of her relationship with Marjolaine; there were nights that her master couldn't even wait till they made it to the chambers, evenings she spent aching against a wall while Marjolaine's fingers worked inside her until she wept and clutched and pleaded for relief, all because of a misplaced glance or the attentions of some admiring youth who had been too stupid to notice the nature of things between them. It is a learned behavior, Leliana supposes, so she keeps her counsel while Nylla goes on.

"She hated me," the Warden says as she grazes her teeth against Leliana's collarbone, huffing in contentment when she feels Leliana tense and rising beneath her. "She was taller than you, with hair like flax and brown eyes. Every apprentice mage worth his salt pined after her, even the elves. She'd been brought in late. Noblewoman's daughter. Racist, of course." She stops, brushes away some strands of Leliana's straw-red hair away, and makes another one of those painfully unhurried rotations with her hips.

"Warden…!"

"Hush, I'm telling a story," Nylla reprimands, though she doesn't stop. "I knew her secret. I saw the way she looked at me. She was so ashamed. It was fascinating."

"You like to talk," Leliana observes, and all that earns her is a harder grind. "_Ah_…"

"We had a lecture on elementals that week, and she sat across me. It was so easy. Just a simple enchantment. Primary, basic force magic."

Leliana's eyes widen when something slips up her tunic, tenting the fabric and teasing at the hem of her smalls. She looks to Nylla, but the Warden's hands are occupied, still holding her – and the thing keeps moving upward, tracing over her skin, making meanders on the inside of her sensitive thigh. Nylla watches her with all the attention a cat gives birds as the cold nothing pulls her smalls down over her legs, the knees, the ankles, and finally tosses them aside as though it were a person doing the deed instead of an invisible, incorporeal form of undefined shape. The dryness comes back to Leliana's mouth when the chill returns to her inner thigh.

"I'll never forget her face when I slid into her," Nylla says, her lips upturned at the memory. "Right in front of all the senior enchanters and the templars and our classmates. Just under the table. In and around… and no one even knew. Farther in, and she asked to be excused. She found me afterward." The Warden leans down and presses her mouth indolently to Leliana's, as though they have all the time in the world. "Kissed me so hard she drew blood. I was her go-to till she applied for leave and went away."

"Am I supposed to be impressed?" Leliana forces out past the knot in her throat. She can't swallow.

"Up to you," the Warden answers, and the cold inches higher. Closer. "Do you love me, Leliana?"

The question almost makes the desire die away inside her. "I thought you didn't care."

Nylla looks down at her indifferently, as though the position they're in doesn't mean anything to her beyond the physical. It probably doesn't. "I don't. Love doesn't exist in the way you think it does. Would I be able to make an elf-hating shem a slave to my skill if it did? She despised me, but I rode her four times a week. In the Chantry, behind the closets in the storage room, in bed while the apprentices slept around us – over Senior Elora's desk. Isn't that funny?"

"It's sick," the bard says, but it just makes Nylla laugh huskily. She hates herself for the slippery arousal it causes in her.

"You don't seem to be complaining." Nylla raises her voice in mockery. "_Oh, mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!_"

"You are cruel," Leliana murmurs, voice cracking.

"Cruel, and good at what I do," Nylla reminds her, and with the slightest nod of her head, the thing circling Leliana's inner thigh slides upward and sheathes itself inside her without pause. She cries out at the sensation, too surprised to feel anything but shocks of pleasure at being so _full_ on such a short notice, and her toes curl with the ecstasy of it. Good Maker, how long has it been? She's stretching and stretching and she doesn't mind the pain because it is a familiar one, and oh, sweet Andraste, she'd forgotten how much better being with another was as opposed to secreted, lonely moments strangled against her bedroll at camp with only her imagination to do the job of a lover's hand. And this lover is _learned._

"Ah… _ah, ah!_"

"It's almost as good as being with a man, I find," Nylla says casually, beginning to move again. Leliana has no words – none that make sense, anyway – so Nylla just teases her, pressure here and no contact there, her hands still keeping Leliana's wrists down. The bard squirms underneath her, body contorting, the muscles below the dip of her hips clenching, and Nylla knows it's not enough. Still she slides the little bit of force magic in and out, drinking in every tapering sigh and straggling gasp.

"F-… fa…"

"Hm?"

"Faster," Leliana pants, her hands fisting and loosening and fisting again at her sides. She moves her head from side to side as though that will alleviate the lancing pleasure coiling in her core. Needy! She hasn't been this needy in years. How much did the time in the Chantry change her? Maker, why had she ever gone there in the first place? The rod of concentrated magic moves out, and it's strange, because there is no sound the way there would be if it'd had been flesh and flesh, only sensation, only the impression of something slithering within her. She can see why this is popular with the mages.

"Call me Nylla," the Warden says, and Leliana is too far gone to realize the full implication of the request.

"N-Nylla…" she whines.

"What?"

She breathes in, almost weeping at the lack of respite, from the fact that she's being held on the furthermost point of an edge she needs to cross. Now. "_Nylla!_" Her voice is hoarse with yearning.

"Better," the elf agrees, and then everything begins again with different force, and Leliana groans against her mouth when the Warden leans down again to deaden the sounds with a dominating kiss. The new pace quickly becomes her next definition of slow, and Leliana paws at Nylla's chest when her hands are released so the Warden can anchor herself to get a better angle on the bard. Leliana gasps again, and she's almost embarrassed at the total absence of any sort of coherency. Almost.

"Nylla…"

"What is it?" the one in question says as though Leliana just asked her to pass the salt.

"Please," Leliana is saying when a particularly hard thrust rocks her back and a spear of white-hot longing races up her spine. "_Ahh… a-ah!_"

"You seem to be doing fine," Nylla notes, her hands feathering across Leliana's abdomen.

"It's not enough," the redhead complains and her sentence ends with a moan. She's reaching down to help herself when Nylla catches her hands again. She nearly bursts at the unfairness of it.

"Did I say you could touch?" Surana says, swaying them back and forth and back again, each time the stroke of her magic landing deeper. It's a steady rhythm.

If Leliana wasn't who is she is, she'd have mistook it for being tender. But this is just methodical – and she's crazed enough not to care that Surana probably doesn't want anything more to do with her than this. She'd made it be enough with Marjolaine, she'll do it again. All she needs is these moments, them locked together, with the perspiration dotting her brow and the consuming fire rising in her. As long as she has this, she will be alright. She wants to see Nylla splayed out beneath her, to feel the pin-straight fall of her ebony hair caught between her hands, to twist and swirl between Nylla's legs till Surana forgets her name; Leliana doesn't want to be the one calling wantonly like a child begging for a treat that's too high for them to reach.

"Have pity," Leliana entreats against Nylla's lips, catching the bottom one between her teeth as she throws her head back to pillow it on the bedroll as another shudder climbs the legs she's wound around Surana's thin waist.

"No," Nylla says, but breaks a hand free – and, Maker be praised – moves it downward. "But I do want to see you lose it for me."

Her skillful fingers find what they're looking for relatively quickly. She gives an experimental, exploratory gentle pinch, and Leliana shouts some meaningless jumble of words into her shoulder.

It's swift work after that. Nylla presses her and tests her until she comes undone twice, three times, shuddering, spent, exhausted, drenched and trembling.

"No more," she says but Nylla takes her by the face and they go tumbling together on the bedroll and the magic does its duty again, diving down until Leliana is sure she will not be able to walk properly for a week after this; until everything in her and about her is loose and drained, wrung of every last bit of energy and she has given everything she has to give. The last and sixth climax is wrenched from her like the tearing of pulling metal. She screams for that one, throwing her head back against the blankets while Nylla rides it out against her, devotedly pumping away every lingering, sensitive wave with attention to each detail. When Leliana falls out of her arms limply to lie there among the mixed-up bedding, the enchantment dissolves, and the fullness disappears in a shower of chilly pinpricks. She doesn't even have the wherewithal to properly vocalize her regret at its absence.

She's still dripping, like a first-time virgin who has found her dreams to be less satisfactory than reality. A reality that can make you frail with need. The sheets will be a mess, she thinks through the fog in her mind. _Did that just really happen?_

"You're filthy," Nylla says coolly as she unhooks Leliana's legs from around her waist. "Clean yourself up when you regain your senses."

Leliana watches her stand in the generously tall tent and tie her robe shut. She doesn't look any more ruffled or out-of-sorts than when she walked in here an hour and a half ago. The afternoon light shining through the tent canvas outlines her sharp profile and makes her look like something out of a painting – a Rivaini seductress, come to steal your virtue and ply you hard till you forget innocence ever existed. But the seductresses are always secretly in love with their charges, at least in the books. They always watch and teach and share their hunger and are eager to create good things, and the novels end happily, as all cheap stories do, but Leliana doesn't mind them. She likes the optimism.

"You sound like Marjolaine," she murmurs before she can stop herself. Nylla doesn't even flinch at the comparison. "Just like her…"

"We seek out things familiar to us. Patterns create a sense of safety. The battered child marries an abusive spouse, and so on," Surana says as she combs one now-clean hand through her long unbound hair. "You will never be free of her as long as you love me. It's alright. I never minded playing with the broken ones anyway."

Surana waves one hand over her shoulder as she walks out of the tent, the gesture more appropriate for people who share an easy friendship, not some tangled bramble of unknowns and obsessions. Her quiet footsteps fade away, swallowed by the rustle of the grass in the wind, disappearing into silence like they had never been.

Leliana is still staring at one of the tent poles when she begins to cry.


End file.
